Play VideoAfter you've mastered the basic eight, which is the standard way of starting to learn to tango, you usually move on to learn how to do forward ochos. Ocho is Spanish for eight. The idea is that the move traces the shape of the figure eight on the floor. The eight in "basic eight" refers to eight beats of music. First you get the temporal dimension, then the spatial.
Above you can see a woman doing a series of forward ochos, dancing in open "embrace" with a wall. Obviously it's more desirable to dance in either open or close embrace with a living partner, who will lead you to make this move.
If you cannot do a forward ocho in close embrace it is because your
posture is not correct. You are blocking the woman from moving forward with your body.
- Deby Novitz
What does this have to do with tango philosophy? If tango philosophy is philosophy that follows before it aims to lead, then it will need a partner (or series of partners - tango is a social dance) that doesn't behave like a wall, that doesn't block philosophical thought from moving forward. And philosophy itself might have to loosen up a bit, allow the straight line of pure logic to trace some curves that can curl gracefully in on each other.
